Why you might be interested in this
Increasingly, management consulting organisations of all sizes are realising the need for their client facing consultants to contribute more effectively to spotting, creating and converting more opportunities to add value to their clients.
Forward-thinking and growing organisations realise that business development skills are no longer just an add-on or a ‘nice to have’ but are an essential, impressive, value-creating and well-respected set of capabilities of top professional consultants. The fact is, top consultants view business development as a leading role priority – the backbone to their role – and organisations who recognise this can gain an edge over their competition by supporting their teams to embrace and develop these capabilities.
Upgrade your culture and brand
When professional business development behaviours are part of your culture, your value to clients increases. Clients know that you’re looking out for them. When the trust and respect is created, clients become more than willing to engage you in collaborative exploratory value-building conversations. Consultants become positioned to do what they do best, and clients become positioned to receive maximum (or optimal) value.
Unfortunately, it’s no surprise that many management consultants (and probably some of your employees) don’t yet quite see it this way. Which can have them feeling occasionally like a fish (albeit an intelligent one) out of water.
They signed up to their role for other reasons.
But the good news is that the seeds of most of the required capabilities are usually somewhere within. Each consultant can learn to identify and leverage their strengths to improve how they develop business, whilst also improving or side-stepping some of their mindset limitations, and refining the relevant high-impact skills that maximise win:wins between themselves and clients.
This “sales training for management consultants” programme will help them do exactly that, and measurably.
Who is this for?
This program is ideal for experienced management consultants who are not creating and converting as many opportunities as they could be, but equally will benefit your business if provided to those earlier in their careers who may be more driven to learn and shape their approach to ultimately deliver more value to clients and generate more revenue to your business.
This programme has been delivered to management consultants in organisations including McKinsey and Company, Capgemini, KPMG and has consistently produced excellent feedback and results.
What’s covered?
Following a collaborative exploratory conversation with your senior leadership, the program is tailored to be highly relevant, interesting and high-impact to equip your team to confidently develop business, with more certainty.
It will cover skills, knowledge and behaviours from any of the following list (and more – get in touch to discuss here):
Foundational learning outcomes:
- Developing sales (or ‘BD’) drive – why strengthen your approach to business development?
- Commercial/business awareness (“The 1 hour MBA for management consultants”)
- Making the technical sale (vs the commercial, operational, financial sale)
- Expanding a management consultant’s mindset into a BD/sales mindset – how to become a respected, proud and professional ‘client developing’ consultant
- Essential BD capabilities and how to acquire them fast (a crash course on ‘accelerated learning’ specifically of professional sales capabilities)
- Developing clarity on the value of your own contribution to the business
Creating new business opportunities:
- Developing a strong entrepreneurial mindset
- Finding and qualifying new prospective clients
- Reaching out to prospective clients
- Networking for management consultants, introverts, extroverts and other personality types
- How to introduce yourself from a BD (sales) perspective
- Building trust and respect fast
Progressing the deal:
- Preparing for sales meetings
- Adapting to personality styles
- Optimising value
- Qualification and fit
- How buyers buy (the psychology of buying)
- Influence and persuasion to help people make high-value buying decisions
- Negotiating tender and contract terms
- Tailoring presentations and demonstrations to be high impact, relevant, engaging and memorable
- Working effectively with sales targets (and developing the right mindset to make them work for you rather than hinder)
- How to train others effectively (e.g. product training) – more on ‘accelerated learning’ and how people learn best
- Creating buying tension
- The risk to the deal
- Pricing and the money conversation
- Closing deals comfortably
Building strong business relationships:
- Maintaining and building relationships
- Keeping in touch in a way that feels right for both parties
- Continuously adding value and insights
Maximising impact internally:
- Self-management and productivity for management consultants
- How more technical management consultants can work more effectively and collaboratively with less technical sales teams (helping them to understand and work well with each other)
- Sharing learning and helping each other to learn effectively (sharing resources, sales questions, techniques)
What’s the ‘accelerated learning’ component?
Many courses have claimed to use ‘accelerated learning’ principals thinking it just means ‘interactive’. It means much more than that. Accelerated learning isn’t a process, but an outcome. When learners truly learn and execute on what they learn successfully, in a shorter time frame, then the learning was ‘accelerated’. The reason this programme is ‘accelerated’ is it has been designed by a former engineer, turned ‘accelerated learning’ consultant (for 14 years – who’s primary role was to help large organisations shorten the time it takes to learn whilst making learning easier and more enjoyable too) turned technical sales improvement consultant.
Who is the programme delivered by?
The programme is designed and delivered by Mark Moore, Director of Excelerated Performance Ltd. Mark spent his childhood and teens studying ‘accelerated learning’ approaches to making learning faster, easier and more enjoyable. He then got a degree in Engineering and Business Studies from the University of Warwick. And soon after he set up a business to help large organisations benefit from faster, more effective approaches to learning new capabilities. Since he realised he had become a proud sales professional (by selling his own services successfully to large organisations including National Grid, ISS, and Macquarie Bank amongst others), he decided to point his accelerated learning, facilitation, consulting and coaching skills to help other technically minded management consultants to make the same transition.
Mark has the ability to not just teach the unlikeliest of people how to ‘sell’ but rather relate directly to them and help them learn how to sell in the fastest and way possible. As a result, they don’t ‘sell’ to their customers, but rather ‘help their customers to buy in the way that they want to buy’.
How? By helping them understand the shortcuts and techniques most desirable to learn and most likely to work based on their existing strengths. Mark relates well to technical people who are challenged with stretching their sales behaviours and mindsets. His workshops help them acquire the tools and options that make sense to them. It focuses on the top 20% of activity that tends to get 80% of their results. It is highly practical, actionable, and highly interactive. Attendees are not ‘taught’ but rather challenged to think and solve real life sales problems which they tie to real results.
Where is the program delivered?
The program is usually delivered in-house at your offices (The UK or internationally) or at an offsite location of your choice. Basically, Mark comes to you.
How long does it last?
It depends on your objectives and budget but typically can last two to three full days, or a spaced series (recommended) of half day sessions.
You may even just want two half-day sessions. But you are advised to consider coaching support following the sales training. Sales training without the commitment to the purposefully supported application (and experimentation of what’s been learned with feedback) often fails fast. Recommendations for the right level of support can be discussed to suit your objectives and budget.
How is this delivered?
Typically a program consists of:
- the exploratory phase where we clarify your goals, objectives and challenges and specifically what activity and behaviours you want to see. Includes optional sales capability self-assessment and conversations with:
- relevant leadership
- program participants
- workshops – preferably short and spaced so that learning is retained, applied and compounds
- observation / coaching
- online resources/learning
For more information or to discuss your specific goals and requirements…
Please get in touch for more information.